[ NNSquad ] Re: Wired: "Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?"

[Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com>]

 The Lasar article is already out of date. IETF's Housley issued a 
correction to this previous remarks, which you can read about at:

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/456906-Housely_IETF_Has_Taken_No_Position_On_AT_T_Prioritization_Assertions.php

From the beginning, one of the most prominent arguments for net 
neutrality, promoted by Lessig, Wu, and their fans, is that regulation 
is needed to preserve the benefits of the Internet's architecture. 
Consequently, understanding what the architecture does and doesn't 
permit is an important question. There's no better source for answering 
this question than the RFCs. It turns out that there are many exceptions 
to the "dumb fat pipe" notion in the RFCs, and DiffServ is clearly among 
them. DiffServ and its RFCs were not simply designed by Cisco engineers 
as Lasar claims; the initial designers were David Clark and Van 
Jacobson, two names that should be familiar to all of us.

The Lasar article quotes CDT to the effect that pricing is only 
mentioned in RFC 2475. That's false, it's mentioned in passing in most 
of the DiffServ and InsServ RFCs. There's not a detailed discussion 
because IETF is worried about anti-trust issues that would arise out of 
a collusion to set prices. All the vendors of equipment and services 
take part in IETF, and there are some things they simply can't talk 
about. But there was a clear understanding that pricing would be a part 
of differentiated services, and this understanding is evident in the RFCs.

The views of the founders of the Internet have played a prominent role 
in this debate, but they've never been fully expressed until now. 
Interestingly, now that it's evident that the founders of the Internet 
didn't envision a dumb fat pipe, we're hearing claims that the history 
doesn't matter.

Gee.

RB



On 9/11/2010 11:10 AM, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?
>
> http://bit.ly/bFsVRZ  (Wired)
>
> I remember some of these discussions, and one thing is pretty clear.
> None of us -- as far as I know anyway -- really anticipated that
> effective competition for Internet access services would continue to
> be so limited and manipulated by the dominant carriers in the manner
> that has now transpired in the U.S.
>
> The point being, history is extremely important in understanding how
> we got to where we are.  It is of far less value in creating
> forward-looking technology-related policies.  So to the extent that
> there's interest in the opinions of we old-timers to deal with issues
> *today*, our views related to these issues in the context of the
> Internet *today* are far more relevant than what they were in the
> context of the Internet of years ago.
>
> --Lauren--
> NNSquad Moderator

--
Richard Bennett